The End of the Pier Read Online Free PDF Page A

rather serious. A lot of thinking about suicide was pretty dangerous, and attempting it—this seemed to come across to the reporters as a surprise—was the clincher. There were twelve symptoms. Maud checked and saw she had all of them except one.
    It wasn’t exactly what you wanted to write your mother about. But her mother was dead. It wasn’t exactly what you wanted to write your son about, either.
    â€œI don’t know,” said Sam.
    â€œWhat? You don’t know what?” His voice had brought her out of her reverie.
    â€œWhether it’s the same one.”
    â€œWhat same one?”
    Sam turned and gave her one of his long looks. “The boat, for god’s sake. You asked if it was the same . . .”
    Maud had forgotten what she’d said. “You’re so literal.”
    â€œYou forgot, didn’t you?” He took a pull at his Coors, smiling in that exasperating way he did when he’d caught her out in some small thing. “You were just sitting here mooning over something and forgot what you were saying.”
    Her little laugh sounded artificial even to her. “Just because you take everything literally . . .”
    â€œLiteral has nothing to do with it. Want some more?”
    Sam was tugging the Popov bottle out of the ice, which he wasn’t supposed to do, and he knew it, and she put her hand over his and shoved it back down. Maud liked to pour her own drink in a certain way and at certain times.
    Holding her glass up to the lamplight, she said, “Well, you’re certainly in one of your moods.”
    â€œWhat’re you talking about? I don’t have moods.”
    That was true. Even when she knew he was sad, or disturbed, he didn’t show it. “You certainly do. Usually, it’s when you’ve been going around at night checking on us.”
    â€œUs?”
    She turned a patient little smile on him. “Ever since Nancy Alonzo was murdered you’ve been checking up. I guess it’s nice of you to do it. But it makes you moody. ‘Obsessed’ is a better word.”
    He just sat there smoking and not answering. When Sam didn’t answer, she knew she’d struck a nerve, and pulled back. “It was pretty terrible, what happened. But it happened in Hebrides. You’re not sheriff of Elton County, so you shouldn’t be worrying about it.”
    â€œIt might have happened in Hebrides, but she lived in La Porte. That cuts no ice with Sedgewick, though.” Sedgewick was the sheriff over there, and there wasn’t much love lost between the two men.
    As Sam talked about Sedgewick and Elton County, Maud poured herself a cold martini and listened to the music.
    â€¢Â Â â€¢Â Â â€¢
    From across the water the faint strains of a whole orchestral arrangement scored her thought. It was only the music, but she had long ago learned the words:
    The morning found you miles away,
    With still a million things to say . . .
    Maud could feel her scalp prickle and tighten, the skin crawl. It was the exact same feeling that people were always using to describe fear or disgust: “My skin just crawled.” It was as if the thoughts had somehow got too large for the skull to contain them, a terrible feeling that traveled down her arms and broke out in gooseflesh.
    She would have to practice harder at containing her thoughts. That image of her mother had slipped out from behind one of her mind’s bolted doors; at least she thought she’d bolted it, but here it was, opening a crack, and her dead mother slipping out like a child told to stay in its room, and sneaking along the hall to tiptoe downstairs. And then the image became unruly, clotted with other images, unmanageable, for it was as if her mother were slyly opening other doors along the way, doors that Maud had stupidly, momentarily left unsecured. Her mother was letting out the other occupants; there was the blur of